While it’s great that so many newspapers have discovered the power of Twitter, it seems most aren’t interested in using it as anything other than another distribution hub. A random check of many of the paper’s Twitter profiles, a full list of which is being maintained here, show the vast majority might have thousands of followers, but are in turn following no one. And those that are still aren’t “@”ing at all, meaning as a whole they’re not interested, it seems, in a conversation. Just push push push that content out.
But the profiles I find the most interesting are those that have a back-and-forth. If I can reply to a paper and have them acknowledge me I’m more likely to engage with their content because I feel like I’m getting something a little different out of it. It doesn’t make the actual content any less interesting, but I likely subscribe to the RSS feed for a publication anyway, so following them on Twitter is, quite frankly, just more clutter.
Erica Smith 7:54 pm on September 5, 2008 Permalink |
More newspapers are Twittering! In Chicago, @coloneltribune probably does the best job of marketing and actually using Twitter. During the Democratic and Republican national conventions, the Sun-Times kind of used Twitter, but the @stlpolitics from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch — which covered Illinois delegates, too — did it better.